Las Campanas Remote Observatory

Introduction
LCRO is a joint project of :

Main Operator Links

Las Campanas Image

Description

    LCRO is loacted in a roll-off roof shed at the Las Campanas observatory located in Chilie and operated under a cooperative agreement with the University of Chile . It may be run as an operator attended observatory, but it is primarily designed to be  tele-remotely operated, or to function as an autonomous queued observation telescope.
 

    The observatory's primary instrument is a unique 0.3 meter f8 Astro Physics Maksutov telescope mounted on an Astro Physics AP1600 mount. The mount is equipped with absolute encoders. The primary imager is an ZWO ASI6200 CMOS camera with an FLI focuser and dual stacked filter wheels. The filter wheels have L,R,G,and B imaging filters, H-alpha, O-III and Si-II narrow band filters, Sloan g',r', and i' photometric filters, Johnson/Cousins B,V,R photmetic filters and a diffraction grating blazed in the first order for slitless spectrocopy. The instrument stack is guided, off axis, by a ZWO ASI174mm CMOS camera.

    This configuration yields a field of view of 52'x35' with a plate scale of 0.32" per pixel. It is designed to provide science quality images. Testing is under way at Las Campanas, the telescope having been moved to a new location in the roll-off observatory at Las Campanas Chilie. When comissioning is complete, it shalll serve as a science imaging platform and as aeducation and public outreach telescope students.